Speaking to the Standard, Mr Alkebida said he knew he wanted to be an instructor from the moment he first clipped into his snowboard at Hemel Hempstead.

“When I walked in it was like a massive freezer,” he said. “I was completely in shock there was snow in the UK.”

“I didn’t really know what I was signing up to. I didn’t know what skiing and snowboarding was, but from that day I was banging on to all my friends about snowboarding.

"They were like "what is that?" so we would look up YouTube videos and everything.”

The programmes take place in snow domes and indoor slopes across the country. (Snow-Camp)

Mr Alkebida was put up for Snow-Camp when he was 13 by St Andrew’s Youth Club in Pimlico where he grew up, adding that people usually assume it’s “nice and posh”.

“But there’s another side to it,” he said. “There is a log of gangs, drugs, knife crime. It’s quite easy to get caught up in it by association.”

He came back to the camp every year until he could go on the ski trip to Pila in Italy, which was only open to those aged over 16.

On first seeing the mountains in Italy, the group were “totally taken aback," he said. "It was so crazy. We had never gone to the mountains before.

Hamza, 19, joined the programme in late 2013 and has found a new career path as an instructor. (Snow-Camp)

“Snowboarding with the really good friends we had all made by that point and learning new tricks in the mountains - it was absolutely just such a great experience."

Now Mr Alkebida has done his first season in Val Thorens in France, which he described as “paradise”, before landing a full-time instructing job at ChelSki in Chelsea.

Snow-Camp helped him find apprenticeships at places like the Ski Club of Great Britain, selling holidays and honing his knowledge about the industry.

He said: "A lot of people in the inner city would never get the opportunity to ski because, one, it is very expensive, and two, a lot of people do not even know about it.”

Many of the participants go on to forge careers in the industry. (Snow-Camp)

“Without that initial boost at Snow Camp and work afterwards, it would have been really easy to get caught up with the wrong group of friends, selling drugs or working a dead end job. It could have led to a lot of trouble.

“So it has 100% changed my life in a direction I never would have expected. It gave me a goal out of school and a job at the end of it, and a career I’m working on now."

The charity, set up by youth worker and passionate snowboarder Dan Charlish in 2003, has expanded nationally to cities including Cardiff, Manchester and Bristol.